Digital brands dominate in new business travel spending study

10 Mar 2019 by Robert Curley

US companies are increasingly turning to digital brands like Uber, Amazon, and online food delivery services to meet their business travel needs, according to Certify’s 2018 SpendSmart Year in Review report.

“Enterprise-wide adoption of sharing economy services—due to convenience, efficiency, and price—are key drivers for this shift,” says Robert Neveu, CEO of Certify.

“The sharing economy vendors have rapidly adopted offerings to target the business traveller and have made it even easier to consume their services across large and enterprise organisations.”

The report, which tracks corporate business travel spending, found that Uber was the single most-expensed brand in 2018, continuing a three-year trend. Fully 11 per cent of all business travel expenses went to the ride-sharing company.

Other digital brands also had a strong showing on the top business travel expense list, which included Starbucks, Amazon, Delta Air Lines, and American Airlines, and Lyft.

Companies also expressed high levels of satisfaction with digital brands, giving their highest approval ratings to the food-delivery app Seamless, Lyft, and Uber Eats.

Meals remain the most common item on expense accounts, with digital brands also playing an increasingly prominent role. Expenses directed to food-delivery services increased 118 per cent from 2017 to 2018, according to Certify, led by Grubhub 36 per cent of transactions), Uber Eats (25 per cent) and DoorDash (21 per cent).